Date: Nov 9, 2012 2:51 AM
Author: Paul A. Tanner III
Subject: Re: Obama's win - good or bad for the US/the world?
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 4:00 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com> wrote:> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Paul Tanner <upprho@gmail.com> wrote:>>> But you're putting forth nothing useful. That is, in spite of your>> attempts to define away the problem, you still have to answer the same>> damn questions that everyone else has to answer, because you still>> have to address a basic problem, which is not enough income to offset>> the outgo enough to get the total debt to go down as a percentage of>> total output. And rather than address these questions, you act as if>> there is something wrong in addressing these questions.>>>> That's quite a sweeping judgement, whereas I'd say I'm putting forth> much that is useful, call me biased.>> And I have addressed the issue of a negentropic biosphere powered by> joules from its star, a starting point in GST.>> We can argue about "negentropic" especially in a "bombs away" economy,> but I'm saying "in principle" i.e. humans are not lacking for energy> income, spoiled rotten might be closer to the problem.>>> Your writing comes across like some hippie who, when confronted with>> the fact that he still needs money to buy toilet paper (metaphor) ->> assuming he wants to use toilet paper and not his hands (metaphor),>> tries to deny that the basic facts of life in terms of money apply,>> that it's bad to think about money and all that.>>>> Did you read 'How the Hippies Saved Physics' yet or doth thee remain a> cultural illiterate (by choice)?>> The "toilet paper" gibe seemed infantile which is why I didn't respond.>> We can talk about the history of currency as metal bracelets> representing cows you'd make good on (if in debt through said> redeemable coupons) but that's a long story. Lets note that most of> nature doesn't use money and gets along fine without it, and those> non-monetized ecologies (sans money) far from being unsophisticated,> are quite capable of not only modeling reality, but being reality.>> Safe to say, in the village market place, having tokens with which to> exchange goodies, beats lugging bags all over the place (really slows> down the negotiations -- you forget why you even came). Money is> definitely a convenience and I'm not against using it sometimes, duh.>

Your whole reply above is an example of what I was talking about.

If you think "toilet paper" is infantile as a metaphor for what we need and which needs to get paid for if we're going to get it (unless you're lucky enough enough to get every doctor and so on you'll ever need to do it all on a volunteer basis), then let's try "health care".

And so let's get real, and confront the facts with respect to health care, shall we?

Would you kill Medicare?

Would you do the conservatives' thing and make it so that old people either pay more and more in terms of the total of premiums, deductibles, and copays or they get no health care, statistically guaranteeing that more and more old people with all those already existing conditions will not be able to have health care via not being able to afford it? Yes? No?

Would you do the conservatives' thing and make it so that Medicare covers less and less, statistically guaranteeing that more and more old people with all those already existing conditions will not be able to have health care that they need? Yes? No?

What about all those 50 million below age 65 that have nothing now, and what about those many more tens of millions that are what they call under-insured?

Where would you get the money to pay for it?

You complain about debts and deficits but offer no suggestions as to what our government should actually do in terms of these very real questions of revenues and spending..